You are here

Belonio

Attached are the info on the latest development on rice husk gas stove in India. Just to update you that rice husk gas stove is now being commercialized by Navdurga Metal Industries of India.

From the India Economic Times:

The three-year-old startup based at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh has created rice husk-powered, smokeless biomass cooking stoves that significantly reduce the cost of household spending on conventional fuel sources such as LPG, electricity, kerosene, wood and wood charcoal. "Rice husks can give about 3,000 kilo calorie of energy, compared with wood that gives between 3,800 and 4,000. These stoves reduce carbon emissions, and cooking costs significantly," said Jaiswal, 31. Nav Durga's first product, aptly named Janta Chulha Smokeless Stove, was launched in 2009 and priced at Rs 500. It has now launched a range under the brand name, Agni, which caters to both domestic and industrial customers. "We currently manufacture up to domestic 10,000 cook stoves and about 50 commercial stoves a month. We want to ramp that up to 20,000 domestic and up to 1,000 commercial stoves soon," Jaiswal said.

According to recent industry data, about 67% of Indian households, adding up to about 166 million households, continue to use solid fuels as their primary source of cooking fuel. While conversion to modern fuels has accelerated in urban areas, rural areas have been slow. Saurabh and the firm's co-founder Arvind Jaiswal, 56, have set up their own distribution and supply chain system. The startup currently has about 50 distributors spread across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Punjab. The company employs about 50, spread across two facilities in Faizabad and Faridabad, in Haryana. "The manufacturing is done by local talent alone," Jaiswal said.

The original news article, and instructions sheets for the stoves are attached as pdf files.

Dr TLUD (Paul S. Anderson) would like to share recent documents about rice husk gasifier technology and its application from Alexis T. Belonio (Professor and Engineer) of the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (CRHET).

The first four documents describe stove developments through CRHET’s collaboration with fabrication shops. These stoves provide rural households and small cottage industries new options for clean cooking using agricultural wastes, like rice husks, as fuel.

The fifth document describes a rice husk gasifier plant which produces enough electricity for community street lighting. This plant was developed by Suki Trading Corporation in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, Philippines in collaboration with Kanvar Enterprises and the Center for Rice Husk Energy Technology (CRHET).

A super low-cost, blue-flame rice husk gas stove was recently developed in Indonesia to provide households with an affordable clean-burning cooking device using rice husks as fuel.

Within the 3 years of development on rice husk gasifier stove, PT Minang Jordanindo Approtech has finally come up with the super low-cost, blue-flame rice husk gas stove carrying a selling price of US$10 to 15, which is very much cheaper as compared with the previous model with a selling price of US$20. With this development, consumers don’t need to amortize for the stove, as what is currently practiced in villages in Indonesia, for them to acquire a unit of the stove in order for them to save money on fuel. Moreover, this stove is now made available to end users at a low cost, freeing the distributors from the task of devising financing schemes just to make the technology affordable to the local households.

As shown, the stove consists of only few parts. It was designed and made so simple to maximize the use of materials and to simplify the production using locally available resources. This stove model has the following basic parts: (a) the casing is made of tin can and can be bought at a very low price from a Can Factory; (b) the reactor can be subcontracted from a sheet metal manufacturer as well as the stove cover
and the burner; (c) the fan, which uses DC 12 volt, 2 watt supplies the required air to gasify rice husks. The flame coming out of the burner is bluish in color, which indicates a very clean gas. It has low black carbon emission of about 50 ug/m3 and below. The CO2 emission is about 0.6 kg CO2 per kg rice husks.

This paper (see attached) describes a continuous-flow rice husk gasifier (CFRHG) designed and developed for various thermal applications such as cooking, drying, kiln firing, baking, and others. The technology follows the principle of a moving-bed, down-draft reactor converting raw rice husks into combustible gases that is rich in carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2).

Different sizes were built and tested in collaboration with the private sector both in the Philippines and in abroad. The gasifier units which were built, tested and evaluated have varying reactor diameter, ranging from 0.40 to 1.20 m with a corresponding power output of 35.7 to 321.2 kWt. The rice husk consumption rate for the different reactor diameters tested ranges from 19 to 169 kg per hour. The specific gasification rate of the gasifiers was found to operate well at 150 kg/hr-m2. The temperature of the gas leaving the reactor varies from 150° to 270°C for all the units tested. The flame temperature reaches as high as 400° to 800°C, depending on the size of the reactor. The bigger the size of the reactor diameter, the higher is the flame temperature. The parasite load varies from 4.2% for the smaller diameter reactor to 1.5% for the bigger model. Combustible gases are generated within 5 to 30 minutes for the different sizes tested. The heating value of the gas ranges from 1200 to 1400 kcal/m3. And, only one person is needed to operate the small gasifier and two persons are needed for the big gasifier model.

Results of the tests showed that the CFRHG is convenient to use and its operation is easily controlled with the use of gas valves. There is no smoke emitted during operation. Black carbon content and tar emissions were found to be very minimal. The char produced can be used for agricultural application and the ash produced can be used for the production of low-cost construction materials.

Fuel source for small-scale industry heating application is becoming expensive. This is more so for food, grain, and other processing industries in Indonesia where the energy sources for various processes are highly dependent on conventional fuel. At present, the cost of LPG went up to IDR 7,000 per kg while kerosene and diesel to as high as IDR 12,000 and IDR 5,500 per liter, respectively.